We owe to Rafael Ramírez de Arellano most valuable and recent information respecting this ancient Spanish-Moorish craft.[26] He has discovered the names of nearly forty guadamacileros who lived and worked at Cordova, principally in the sixteenth century. It is not worth while to repeat these names alone, but one or two particulars connected with a few of them are interesting. In 1557 four of these artificers, named Benito Ruiz, Diego de San Llorente, Diego de Ayora, and Anton de Valdelomar, signed a contract to prepare the cut and painted guadamaciles for decorating a palace at Rome. This contract, which is most precise and technical, is published in No. 101 of the Boletín de la Sociedad Española de Excursiones. The only further notice which Señor Ramírez de Arellano has discovered relating to any of these four craftsmen, tells us that nine years after the signing of the document just mentioned, Diego de Ayora leased some houses in the Calle de la Feria for a yearly rental of twenty-two ducats and three pairs of live hens.
Another interesting contract is dated April 17th, 1587. By it the guadamacilero Andrés Lopez de Valdelomar agreed, in company with Hernando del Olmo of Marchena, and with Francisco de Gaviria and Francisco Delgado, painters, of Cordova, to make a number of pieces of guadamecí for the Duke of Arcos. The work was to be terminated by July of the same year. Valdelomar was to receive from the duke's agent three reales for each piece, and the painters two reales and a half; this money to be paid them by instalments as the work proceeded.
XVI
CELOSÍA
(Alhambra, Granada)
On August 26th, 1567, before the mayor of Cordova and the two inspectors of this trade, Pedro de Blancas was officially examined and approved in “cutting, working, and completing a guadamecí of red damask with gold and silver borders on a green field, and a cushion with green and crimson decoration and faced with silver brocade.”
The Ordinances of Cordova also tell us much about this industry. The oldest of these city laws which deal with it are dated 1529. Those of 1543 were ratified by a Crown pragmatic early in the seventeenth century, and at this later date we learn that the craft had much declined, the leather being by now “of wretched quality, the colouring imperfect, and the pieces undersized.” The Ordinances published in the sixteenth century provide that every applicant for official licence to pursue this craft and open business as a guadamacilero, must prove himself, in presence of the examiners, able to mix his colours and design with them, and to make a canopy together with its fringe, as well as “a cushion of any size or style that were demanded of him; nor shall he explain merely by word of mouth the making of the same, but make it with his very hands in whatsoever house or place shall be appointed by the mayor and the overseers of the craft aforesaid.”
It was also provided by these Ordinances that the pieces of leather were to be dyed, not with Brazil-wood, but with madder, and that their size, whether the hide were silvered, gilt, or painted, was to be strictly uniform, namely, “the size of the primitive mould,” or “three-quarters of a yard in length by two-thirds of a yard, all but one inch, in width.” The standard measures, made of iron and stamped with the city seal, were guarded under lock and key; and the Ordinances of 1567 establish the penalty of death for every guadamacilero who shall seek, in silvering his wares, to palm off tin for silver.
